Patrick moves from Rahal to Andretti Green

The IndyCar Series will open their 17 race championship run on Saturday night at 8:00pm (Eastern US) with Sam Hornish, Jr., setting out to defend both his IndyCar Series and Indianapolis 500 titles. While the prospects of a competitive season are high, it appears that Hornish will face many of the same challengers as he did in 2006.

Matching last year's entry list with 20 entries, the IndyCar Series is not exactly growing, though some aspects of the series do appear relatively stable. And in the jumbled up world that is US open wheel racing, anything resembling stability should be considered a good thing.

One clear mark of this stability is in the relative lack of driver turn-over from 2006 to 2007. Fifteen of last year's top sixteen drivers return, with just Bryan Herta absent as he leads the new Andretti Green Racing Acura ALMS LMP2 program. Dario Franchitti, and Tony Kanaan joined Herta in winning their class in the season opening Sebring 12 Hours event last weekend – a good omen for an AGR team that struggled in 2006.

Even the new names coming in for 2007 aren't really that new. Darren Manning takes over the Foyt Racing seat at the recommendation of new team manager Larry Foyt. Manning previously drove the 2004 and part of the 2005 season for Ganassi Racing.

Sarah Fisher, at one time the most popular driver in the IndyCar Series, comes back to drive a second Dreyer and Reinbold Racing after a couple seasons of stock car racing. She will be teamed with Buddy Rice who became available when Rahal Letterman was unable to find sponsorship for him.

The other full-time addition to the IndyCar Series will be AJ Foyt, IV who will drive the third Vision Racing entry for series owner Tony George.

Part-time entries at Homestead include Alex Barron for Curb Agajanian Beck Racing and Marty Roth in his own car. None of the 20 cars entered for Homestead will be piloted by a rookie driver; with Roth have the least experience as he has made just five starts in the past three seasons.

Deleted from the IndyCar Series is the Fernandez Racing team. One of their former driver's, Kosuke Matsuura has taken his Super Aguri program to Panther Racing and his former team-mate, Scott Sharp, moved to Rahal with his new Patron Tequila sponsorship.

Just to make everything visually confusing at the track, Sharp's former sponsor, Delphi Automotive, has also jumped to Panther Racing and their driver – Vitor Meira. The paint scheme remains largely the same for Meira as it was for Sharp, with the car number “4” being the main difference.

The most significant off season move comes from Danica Patrick who left Rahal Letterman to join Andretti Green. Besides the off-track benefits to Danica who stands to make significantly more money on the heavily backed AGR team, she also joins a team with true championship capabilities. Those will likely be shown by team-mates Kanaan and Franchitti, though Danica is also expecting better results, and possibly her first win in 2007.

One certain positive for the Indy Racing League is a major upturn in the developmental IndyPro Series. Since its inception five years ago, the IPS has struggled to fill grids, but at least 24 cars are expected at Homestead, with even more planning to run the dual event street race in St. Petersburg.

Technical changes for 2007 are few, with the most important being a switch from 90% methanol/10% ethanol in 2006 to 100% ethanol in 2007. Though more precisely, it's 98% ethanol, 2% gasoline which had to be added to “denature” what is essentially grain alcohol and make it undrinkable. Through extensive off season testing by Honda, the new ethanol fuel caused few problems, and delivered 30% more fuel economy to engines that were raised to 3.5liters to match last year's power output levels.

The increased fuel economy has caused IRL officials to reduce fuel tank sizes down to 22 gallons. This will insure similar pit windows as in 2006.

The IndyCar Series machines (all Dallaras with equal Honda power) will take to the track on Saturday Night with an extra five degrees of rear wing and a softer tire than last season. Designed to improve the on track racing product, pre-season testing showed this wing and tire change significantly helped the slower teams catch the big ones – making the winner of the opening race a little harder to pick, though Penske and Ganassi were still dominant in the testing.

Amid some concern that teams were “playing” with the upper rear wing element too much, the IRL has decided they will control and distribute this wing “flap” to all of the teams at each event in 2007. They will get this piece of equipment upon entering the technical inspection area the day before practice begins. Teams will be allowed to “wrap” the wing with their sponsorship logo's, but no other alterations may be made.

Practice for the Homestead event will begin at noon ET US on Friday. Note, there will be no race day warm-up in 2007.

Homestead-Miami Speedway (Round 1 of 17) - Schedule
Friday, March 23rd:

12:00 – 1:00PM ET – IndyCar Series Practice Group 1
1:00 – 2:00PM ET – IndyCar Series Practice Group 2
5:40 – 6:40PM ET – IndyCar Series Practice Group 1
6:40 – 7:40PM ET – IndyCar Series Practice Group 2
8:45PM – IndyCar Series Qualifying

Saturday, March 24th:

8:00PM ET – XM Satellite Radio Indy 300.

ORS / CAPSIS International